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Diapers, for young and old.
Mold.
Ugh.Find the positives, Neve.
It takes me a minute but my search ends with pillows. “At least I have cushion under my aching knees… regardless if it’s a cloud of disease or not.”
I poke my head around to find that I’m still near Pink Street. Down the hill, bright lights flash everywhere and smoke filters the sky.
If I had thought I dreamed it, I hadn’t.
The place of hidden blushes and heat between the thighs has been part of Pink Street for ages, and in one night, the Rosa Negra disintegrates before the eyes of its neighbors. Where were they when the fire started? No one thought to help? They knew I was in there. Six years I worked there, days I spent arranging every single sex toy by category, hours wasted reading the erotica novels in the back room.
“Are you trying to get caught?” Styx scares the shit out of me. He’s between the wall and the dumpster. “Get down!” He points toward the other side, where the hill slopes a little.
“You!” I whisper-shout and knee-walk a few feet through the gross crap.
“Yes, me.” Styx takes an old, busted ladder from the illegal construction material left behind.
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” Although I’m happy he’s alive and still here, my whispers come out through gritted teeth. Five puffs of vocal air.
He leans the latter against the dumpster. “I was helping you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
With a perplexed brow, he steps back. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I glance back to make sure the commotion is still on the business. “What the fuck is that?” I point toward the burning building.
“It’s a distraction.” He takes one of the rusted paint cans full of broken bits and empties it.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever? I just pulled you out of a burning building.”
“From a fire you started. I check the sturdiness of the ladder. “What was the plan?”
“This.” He holds both hands out in the air. “We’re out.”
My eyes land on his amused face. He doesn’t look like someone who just caught in a lie. “What?”
One finger angles toward the discarded appliances on the other end of the street. “A busted blender?” Next to it, five or six piles of cooking magazines that should have been dropped into the recycling bin. “Oh!” My duffel bag camouflaged into the material. He brought it out. Or was he planning on taking the money? “I don’t really know what to say.”
“Thank you would be nice?”
“Thank you,” I grit out. “for trying to turn me into charcoal. Thank you for dropping me in a cess pool.”
“The plan wasn’t to put you in the trash, but I also didn’t expect you to come downstairs and pass out.” He tilts his head to the side. “What the hell were you doing in the Suspiro Room when it was on fire?”
“Looking for you… That’s where all the dicks were.”
Styx holds the broken ladder steady, while I shake the elbow macaroni loose. “I put them in there. Did you know they are also smoke detectors?”
“They are not.” And that wasn’t the only dick I was talking about.
“When the smoke is heavy enough, it blocks the sensor, which will get them to speak and dance.”
So, the noises weren’t coming from the bathroom, or the lobby, or the upstairs.“You scared the shit out of me thinking there were people all over the place.”
